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Raisers Edge NXT Icon Raisers Edge NXT ODBC Driver

The Raisers Edge NXT ODBC Driver is a powerful tool that allows you to connect with live data from Raisers Edge NXT, directly from any applications that support ODBC connectivity.

Access Raisers Edge NXT data like you would a database, including Raisers Edge NXT Events, Gifts, Opportunities, etc. through a standard ODBC Driver interface.

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Analyze Raisers Edge NXT Data in R


Create data visualizations and use high-performance statistical functions to analyze Raisers Edge NXT data in Microsoft R Open.

Access Raisers Edge NXT data with pure R script and standard SQL. You can use the CData ODBC Driver for Raisers Edge NXT and the RODBC package to work with remote Raisers Edge NXT data in R. By using the CData Driver, you are leveraging a driver written for industry-proven standards to access your data in the popular, open-source R language. This article shows how to use the driver to execute SQL queries to Raisers Edge NXT data and visualize Raisers Edge NXT data in R.

Install R

You can complement the driver's performance gains from multi-threading and managed code by running the multithreaded Microsoft R Open or by running R linked with the BLAS/LAPACK libraries. This article uses Microsoft R Open (MRO).

Connect to Raisers Edge NXT as an ODBC Data Source

Information for connecting to Raisers Edge NXT follows, along with different instructions for configuring a DSN in Windows and Linux environments.

Before establishing a connection, supply the SubscriptionKey, found in the Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT Profile.

Authenticating to Raiser's Edge NXT

Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT uses the OAuth authentication standard. You can connect to without setting any connection properties using the embedded OAuth credentials.

Alternatively, you can authenticate by creating a custom app to obtain the OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL connection properties.

See the Help documentation for an authentication guide.

When you configure the DSN, you may also want to set the Max Rows connection property. This will limit the number of rows returned, which is especially helpful for improving performance when designing reports and visualizations.

Windows

If you have not already, first specify connection properties in an ODBC DSN (data source name). This is the last step of the driver installation. You can use the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure ODBC DSNs.

Linux

If you are installing the CData ODBC Driver for Raisers Edge NXT in a Linux environment, the driver installation predefines a system DSN. You can modify the DSN by editing the system data sources file (/etc/odbc.ini) and defining the required connection properties.

/etc/odbc.ini

[CData RaiserEdgeNXT Source] Driver = CData ODBC Driver for Raisers Edge NXT Description = My Description SubscriptionKey = MySubscriptionKey OAuthClientId = MyOAuthClientId OAuthClientSecret = MyOAuthClientSecret CallbackURL = http://localhost:33333

For specific information on using these configuration files, please refer to the help documentation (installed and found online).

Load the RODBC Package

To use the driver, download the RODBC package. In RStudio, click Tools -> Install Packages and enter RODBC in the Packages box.

After installing the RODBC package, the following line loads the package:

library(RODBC)

Note: This article uses RODBC version 1.3-12. Using Microsoft R Open, you can test with the same version, using the checkpoint capabilities of Microsoft's MRAN repository. The checkpoint command enables you to install packages from a snapshot of the CRAN repository, hosted on the MRAN repository. The snapshot taken Jan. 1, 2016 contains version 1.3-12.

library(checkpoint) checkpoint("2016-01-01")

Connect to Raisers Edge NXT Data as an ODBC Data Source

You can connect to a DSN in R with the following line:

conn <- odbcConnect("CData RaiserEdgeNXT Source")

Schema Discovery

The driver models Raisers Edge NXT APIs as relational tables, views, and stored procedures. Use the following line to retrieve the list of tables:

sqlTables(conn)

Execute SQL Queries

Use the sqlQuery function to execute any SQL query supported by the Raisers Edge NXT API.

constituents <- sqlQuery(conn, "SELECT Id, AddressLines FROM Constituents WHERE Type = 'Home'", believeNRows=FALSE, rows_at_time=1)

You can view the results in a data viewer window with the following command:

View(constituents)

Plot Raisers Edge NXT Data

You can now analyze Raisers Edge NXT data with any of the data visualization packages available in the CRAN repository. You can create simple bar plots with the built-in bar plot function:

par(las=2,ps=10,mar=c(5,15,4,2)) barplot(constituents$AddressLines, main="Raisers Edge NXT Constituents", names.arg = constituents$Id, horiz=TRUE)